1022 DR. BABASAHEB AMBEDKAR : WRITINGS AND SPEECHES
“they”, I was referring to those millions of women living in our villages who have as good commonsense, and who know what they are and what they wish to be; it is they who are apprehensive of the changes that you are suggesting because even the introduction of divorce is going to change the attitude of everybody, of the society as a whole. The question I would like to ask is : Are you going to enter a wedlock with the idea of divorce, or are you going to enter wedlock with the idea of staying in it permanently ? If you adopt measures of easy divorce there is going to be a big change of attitude. Of course we are prepared to have that change and suffer the consequences, but the educated ladies who are sponsoring and advocating the passing of this Bill have not thought of all the consequences that are going to be fall especially to the lot of the illiterate women. After divorce an educated girl may be able to stand on her own legs, get a sufficiently lucrative job anywhere, and probably get a better husband. But what is going to happen to an illiterate woman ? My lady friends here still complain of the dominance of the male sex, and to the extent that the woman is tyrannised by men, what is going to happen to the illiterate woman who will be the object of these vagaries and domination of the male sex ? Have these educated women ever considered the consequences which will result from divorce for example, the care of children and their protection ?
So, although I have expressed myself in favour of it, I would like to caution that in introducing any reform or changing any portions of our law we must coolly study the consequences that are going to result therefrom. Unless we do that we may be trying to do things which may not be necessary at all. I feel that there is much in the Hindu religion, there is much in the Hindu Law which deserves to remain, though probably in a slightly reformed condition. But the attitude behind some of the suggestions is somewhat anti-Hindu : they regard everything Hindu as suspect and look down upon it with contempt. They have somewhere or somehow imbibed the idea that whatever exists in India is absolutely rotten and that unless they go on the lines of foreign nations and imbibe their ideas and introduce them here, the Hindu society will not come up to the standards they expect of it. I am quite prepared to admit that they are actuated by honest motives, but at the same time there can be a different point of view which suggests that merely by blind imitation you are not going to survive. The way to survive is to modify according to the times and not go on in a whole-hogging fashion to change the very basis and fundamentals of our law and society. And